I'm working on this project for school where we have to model a hi-res submarine. The way I've been taught, is touse Turbosmooth and meshsmooth, and insetting polys and chamfering edges to get sharp corners and reduce the blobbiness that you usually end up with.

My problem is that I keep getting these ugly folds and creases at some of the edges, and all of the corners. Is there a technique or sonething to reduce/eliminate that ugliness?

Thanks,
Carl

scrimski

07-27-2006, 06:38 PM

nice and clean quad modeling would avoid this. No tris and polys with more that 4 sides.

Could you post a wire of your problem?

edit: There is a thread about sub-D modeling solutions on www.military-meshes.com

http://www.military-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89

carlg

07-28-2006, 07:41 PM

Hi,

I have a few pics here so you can see the problem im having. Any advice you can give would be much appreciated

Carl

scrimski

07-28-2006, 07:56 PM

As I thought. You mesh contains 5 side polys which cause the pinching in the meshSmooth, so you will have to create new cuts to create quads only.

Could you post a larger screenshot of the uns moothed of the circled area using the wire material from my signature?

What's up Carig. Oooh that's a tough little bastard right there man. You can fix the ngon or tri problem but I'm affraid making everthing quads is not the only thing that is going to work here my friend. With modeling or anything else for that matter, is not that black and white and I'm sure Scrimski knows this as well. I would suggest cleaning up that ngon and then add another horizontal edge-loop and then try sliding the loop upwards with edge constraints turned on, you may also want to do this with end result turned on so you can make adjustments while your meshsmooth/turbosmooth is displayed. If that doesn't work you can try selecting the two verts at the corners and click the relax button and play with those parameters. And again do this while the end result is turned on. I hope that helps bro. I'll try and post a pic illustrating what I'm talking about. Later

scrimski

07-29-2006, 09:07 AM

I'm quite sure that the other side of that corner has the same pinching problem, so instead of the blue edges cut a new edge (like the red).

This will create a quad only solution.
And yes, modeling isn't black and white, you can use bGons and tris, IF you know where they won't create errors when smoothing, but in this particular case you should keep it quad only. It's a matter of experience.

Here (http://www.gfx-scene.de/index.php4?go=tutorial&id=57) you can find solutions for soving nGon-problems, it's written in German, but well illustrated.

yeman

07-29-2006, 07:25 PM

I'm quite sure that the other side of that corner has the same pinching problem, so instead of the blue edges cut a new edge (like the red).

This will create a quad only solution.
And yes, modeling isn't black and white, you can use bGons and tris, IF you know where they won't create errors when smoothing, but in this particular case you should keep it quad only. It's a matter of experience.

Here (http://www.gfx-scene.de/index.php4?go=tutorial&id=57) you can find solutions for soving nGon-problems, it's written in German, but well illustrated.

But on the top red line since you have two very close parallel lines, wouldn't that create a sharp edge on the supposedly rounded surface?

The solution worked on that link because they are on planar surfaces.

carlg

08-08-2006, 01:39 AM

I think I have fixed it. I just ended up bringing the 2 top edges closer together, cause before the faces made by the inset along the edge werent 45 degrees, the way the face made by the chamfer in the corner is. (Those 2 diagonal lines arent mine -- the wire material keeps showing them even though they aren't there):
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/9979/problem2ie8.jpg

This is what i get with turbosmooth:
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/3710/problem1fy4.jpg

This is about how big the object would be in the shot i wanted to do:
http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/598/problem3sy9.jpg

It's a bit better, no? But does it look sharp enough at the edges? If it were textured (of course), would you believe that it was an object made of metal off of a ship's hull?

Thanks in advance for the input.

Enlightenment

08-09-2006, 03:21 AM

The edges look too rounded for an industrial metal shape. Try reducing the effective chamfer by at least half.

While I'm at it, on a real metal shell, the sharp corners between the lower portion of the disk and the fingers would result in undesirable stress concentrations and would be avoided on any surface subject to pressure loading. Most engineers would fillet these corners rather severely to reduce the risk of metal fatigue failure. I don't know if you're interested in technical realism, (or even modelnig a real sub!) but getting the engineering details right can help a good deal with the overall believability of a mechanical rendering.

carlg

08-09-2006, 05:54 PM

Cool, Ill change the chamfer, but what do you mean by fillet?

PS: The part I showed is supposed to be the socket for a mechanical arm, sticking out the side of the submarine. I'm not sure what bearing that has on its construction, but whatever:shrug:
Here is the link to the entire model, so you can see the style I was trying for:

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